Lamar’s plan for Truman home caught in Senate ‘grudge’ match w/ link to learn more about the Truman birthplace

By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

LAMAR, Mo. — Hoping to give a shot in the arm to their struggling community, Lamar city leaders put forth a modest proposal a couple years ago.

Add the small frame house where Harry Truman was born in a downstairs bedroom in 1884 to the National Park Service. Uncle Sam already owns and manages Truman’s last home in Independence and his family’s Grandview farm as part of the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site.

Bringing the Lamar home on board would give that site added prestige and make it — and the community — more high profile and help draw tourists. Work to improve the site also would mean jobs and an infusion of construction money for Lamar, which lost its largest employer in 2007 and still struggles with double-digit unemployment.

Besides, the community hasn’t been happy with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which currently owns and manages the home. State and city leaders developed a master plan for the home in 1997 that included adding a mule barn — Truman’s father was a mule trader — a historic school and a media center for children.

With that plan in mind the city moved utility lines, added curbs and gutters in the neighborhood and acquired several nearby properties. The state also purchased some nearby properties and did work on the historic home, replacing windows and the wood-shingle roof, but in the mind of city leaders such as City Manager Lynn Calton, little else has happened to complete their vision.

“Eleven years later, the only thing we’ve done is just infrastructure work,” said Calton, who believes the site is on the bottom of the state’s list of priorities.

“It has been a slow process,” Mayor Keith Divine acknowledged last week. “I think people would like to see that go forward a little quicker.”

But now Lamar’s modest proposal is tied up in a controversial U.S. Senate bill that, according to The Hill, a leading Capitol newspaper, has evolved into a “grudge match between the majority leader and the chamber’s most defiant Republican.”

That could happen this week.

‘Critical piece’

Nobody in Congress may be a bigger fan of Truman than U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, who represents Lamar and the rest of Missouri’s 4th District.

Nearly 80 years ago, Skelton’s father was a local lawyer and prominent Democrat who met Truman when the latter came to Lexington to dedicate the Madonna of the Trail statue. Truman was a commissioner from Jackson County at the time. One thing led to another, and Ike found himself befriending Truman, too.

When Bess Truman died in 1982, Skelton, who was then a congressman, worked with others from the Missouri delegation to make Truman’s Independence home a national historic site. Today, visitors can still see the former president’s hat hanging on a coat rack just as he left it.